It was a commercial success, after a few Dylan albums that had critics saying the songwriting master was in a creative rut (after the basically unrivaled production of the 1965-66 Nashville records)

It’s generally considered one of the greatest rock n’ roll albums of all time—with perfect scores from several different critics.

Okay, I think that’s a good start. It’s many people’s favorite Dylan album, especially those that want a little more vulnerability from the Nobel prize winning lyricist. Try these, for instance:

In 14 months I’ve only smiled onceAnd I didn’t do it consciously

That’s from ‘Up To Me’ which didn’t even make the album. Yet it’s a brilliant 6-minute song of love and loss. It could’ve been the 11th song on Blood and it would’ve fit. Except that it’s nearly the same chords and music as ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ and, too, has a bit of ‘Shelter from The Storm’ —one of the album’s more famous songs. And ‘Shelter’ deserves its post in folk music history, as the uplifting, love song of indistinct time and romantic rescue.

‘Shelter’, along with some of the album’s other tracks like ‘Tangled Up Blue’ (the first song where the first set of lyrics came from) and ‘Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack of Hearts’ convey the mixed feelings that I think give the album is nuance. It’s not a straightforward “breakup” album (nothing with Dylan is straightforward anyway). It’s an album of loss done by a master of his craft, and its going to be mixed with the kind of writing that explores the whole of the human condition, just with a change of perceptive lens. Things aren’t groovy or wild and metallic like the sixties Dylan songs (think of the jaded, poetic chaos of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ or ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’), they’re solemnly described instead.

And the lyrics and music convey that. Part of the big deal about the two separate recording sessions is the musical sensibility Dylan put in in both. The New York sessions are stripped and bare (which were leaked for years as the so-called ‘Blood On the Tapes’ bootleg). The Minnesota sessions are fuller, with songs often accompanied by an organ which gives some tracks their unique sound.

What the rest of those tracks become is an intimate picture of something. On first listen, you see the breakup album that it’s been tagged as. According to Dylan himself—perhaps the least reliable source on Dylan meanings, ironically—that the songs are creations inspired by Chekhov stories. Jakob Dylan, the son of the couple in question, said the album is “my parents talking”. Regardless of meaning, the album is a wondrous trip of hurt, inspiration, life, and more.

Some examples, yeah?

We’ll start with ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’ which goes on like its title sounds. It’s a 3-minute 60s-folk-song without so much as a breathe between verses. It’s a favorite sing-a-long from the album, but it didn’t start as that. My favorite piece from More Blood, More Tracks is the original ‘Lonesome’ which runs as a 5 and a half minute blues jam with a more drawn out, deflated Dylan. There’s no pop. And yet, lyrically, it works on both levels. Because it’s a yarn of anticipated longing, it can play as a poppy ode to current jubilation, or a song of a loss not yet encumbered. ‘Lonesome’s best lyrics:

Situations have ended sadRelationships have all been badMine’ve been like Verlaine’s and RimbaudBut there’s no way I can compareAll those scenes to this affairYer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Want to see that song’s impact? Search that title on Spotify and see just how many covers have not only been done, but have been committed to albums.

On the album, ‘Lonesome’ ends a not-quite-forlon side 1, coming after the scowl of ‘Idiot Wind’ where Dylan ruminates on the stupidity of young love, with an anger toward poor decisions made. Or maybe it’s none of those things. Who knows?

‘Idiot Wind’ itself forms another unlikely pair, off the heels of ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’ one of the albums crushing songs. You can listen to the original or you can listen to this outtake, which comes accompanied with its own lyric video. I suggest taking 4 minutes and 42 seconds of your day and watching it. For lyrics, not much beats this verse:

Bird on the horizon, Sitting on a fenceHe’s singing a song for me, at his own expenseAnd I’m just like that bird, Oh, singing just for youOh, I hope you can hearHear me singing through these tears

That’s bruising in its own right, but it doesn’t hit the album’s emotional apex. That one is on side 2’s ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ — an fiercely determined breakup song that even Hank Moody recommends singing after you’ve been wrung by heartbreak.

It is the bloodiest of all the tracks.

No ifs, ands, or buts around that. It is the stinging middle of the whole sordid masterpiece here—and through the (only) three variations on More Blood (here’s one), it remains calm, orderly, and desperately downtrodden. It is a song of capitulation, of moving on (in only the pyrrhic sense), and of living with mistakes that’ve made uncomfortable truths.

I could quote the whole song for the purpose of showing that, but I’ll stick with the lines that hit me once as a younger man with the force of 20 million lesser songs, and still streak the rivulets of my veins when they play now.

I see a lot of people, as I make the roundsAnd I hear her name both here and there, as I go from town to townAnd I’ve never gotten used to it, I’ve just learned to turn it off

As a member of the great church of Bob Dylan, I can say for sure that we get nothing—and I mean, nothing—like this in Dylan’s entire 50-year catalogue. So we take it as some kind of evidence. And the privilege of being a music listener is that you get to make the determination of what that evidence means. For me, it means that Dylan can make a masterpiece of the throngs of sadness. And, in listening through the album and its outtakes, that he managed to will himself to perfection despite those throngs.

I’ll end this post, this fawning over this creative brilliance of an album, the way that the album itself ends:

Life is sad, life is a bustAll you can do, is do what you mustYou do what you must do, and you do it wellI do it for you honey baby, can’t you tell?

The War On Drugs (the band) has put out a new single — the first new music we’ve seen since Slave Ambient.

I was a late-comer to Slave Ambient (and the band, then, by default) but it hasn’t stopped me from absolutely getting lost in the music these guys keep making.

The band is certainly of the newer “indie darlings” — a Pitchfork-backed band in no secret way. (Though the writers at Pitchfork seem so keen on harping it as “road trip” music and harking on some kind of metaphor of distance that the songs bring. To me, it’s not distance in the stretching out sense, it’s distance of a tiny thing — a moment, a statue, a note that plays. It’s the small thing that you get lost in, and you take yourself the distance. It’s getting lost music more than the “road trip” label — which denotes some kind of destination. The music, for me, will always be destination-less. And really, really good).

Following a band is exhausting. Or, it can be. Certainly balancing a job while doing it can get serve up some timecrunches.

Answering emails with your ears still ringing? It’s tough.

In the last two weeks, I’ve followed my favorite band, Pearl Jam, up the west coast — from San Diego to Vancouver — and kept up with my Zirtual work as best I could. (Which, by the way, thanks to my Learning Team for the assistance).

I have more respect for the guys of Pearl Jam than I did before. And that was already high. I’d seen them 13 times before, twice already this year before this tour. My first show was 10 years ago. I didn’t know if they’d be touring 10 years later, let alone that I, at the age of 25, would be following them on my own mini-tour.

I grew up hearing stories of hippies following the Dead, boozehounds following Buffett and a few stories of following Pearl Jam in those early days as they ripped through ‘Last Exit’ and Eddie was still crowdsurfing. It was appealing, romantic even, to jump in a car and dedicated some time to a band. Didn’t consider it a life priority, though.

It was more an accident than anything else that I wound up doing what I did. My cousin called to see if I wanted to check out a few shows in Southern California, and I saw shows in Portland (which I’d wanted to see) and Vancouver (home of a Zirtual coworker & friend). So I booked all of the above.

No car, though. Planes. A Macbook. My Android. Some Zirtual Certification sessions along the way. A Thanksgiving with some Irish friends in the Bay Area. Not your typical “groupie” experience.

But, coming out of it now, it was a tremendous experience. It’s strange, now, to not have my days occasionally punctuated by a three-hour concert experience. It seems mundane to now have Mike & Stone ripping solos across my Tuesday nights.

A few people asked — is it really worth seeing them six times?

My answer is, of course, yes. It’s why I was confident in booking those tickets (& spending that money. Here’s some stats from the six shows I saw:

206 total songs (34.3 avg. per show)

104 unique songs

62 songs played at only one of those shows

at least one song from all ten of their studio albums

14 different covers (+ 4 different “tags”)

Hell, during the last show I saw, in Vancouver, they played 7 songs I hadn’t seen yet. After 5 shows!

The band puts on a different show each night. It’s as simple as that. Other stat trackers show they played over 170 different songs on this tour. 170. That is SO many songs to know how to play. To be confident in performing. To serve up to a crowd in a cavalcade of music.

It’s a gorgeous thing to see such ingenuity in each performance. Thinking that they crafted each experience for that specific venue. And I got six of those. 19 in total, now. I doubt they’ll be my last shows.

The lyrics here are just astounding. From Craig Finn & Co’s first album:

i guess you’re old enough to know. kids out on the west coast are taking off their clothes. screwing in the surf and going out to shows. they get high and ride around in gtos. i guess you’re old enough to know. certain songs they get so scratched into our souls

It only takes one live version of “Bad” to remind me why this band is so great. Unfortunately, these days it’s gotten easier to forget that. Here’s Bad, live ’93 in Dublin. Incredible version of what just be U2’s best song.